Experiment Number 207

i.

The Emergency Conference of Creators took place on a mundane day not unlike any other. The room was buzzing with a discordance that only comes when too many bodies with too strong opinions are put in not enough space with no breathing room.
“Silence” a voice boomed, bouncing off the hexagonal walls and returning to the throat of Chief Creator of All Thinking Operations. “A decision has been made regarding the problems at hand,” he surveyed the room, now stagnant with bated anticipation, “time is running out and funds are running low. Our trial is near completion and preliminary results are as expected. There is no need to keep the Subjects around any longer.”
The room immediately erupted again; loud noises of anger and protest were thrown at the Chief’s proclamation.
“But sir-“
“No. I know we have grown attached to them in the last few millennia, but we have our findings and there is no reason to keep the trial running. It is important, as scientists and lead Thinkers, to keep ourselves distanced from our experiments. For mine and your sanity. Trust me.”
A dull silence permeated the room, each Creator considered the choice that had been made for them. And then, unanimously, they stood up and raised their forefinger to their head-̶-the universal sign of agreement ̶ and each filed out of the room. The project would be plugged within the next 72 hours.

ii.

On his way out, Chief Creator of All Thinking Operations was stopped midway to the Viewing Room by his intern, a mere youngling of 124 years, still inexperienced in the art of making high-risk decisions. 

“Sir, that was incredible. The way you handled the pressure with such, such clear confidence, and such assurance! Gosh, I hope to someday be able to oversee important experiments…how did you do it?” He enthused, his three eyes brimming with innocence not yet tainted.
Unaffected by his rather embarrassing admirer, Chief stopped and turned, deep in thought. “Come with me youngling. Let me show you something.”
The two men entered the Viewing Room, a pod in the shape of an inverted pyramid, with high sloping windows instead of walls and white machines unbeknownst to their function beeping and emanating an eerie glow. Chief sat down comfortably and typed some sort of command on one of the machines; the entire pyramid began turning to the left, passing blackness and a blur of stars until finally stopping on a pale blue dot in the distance.
“That, my fledgling friend, is Earth.”

iii.

“Earth, sir?” The poor intern scratched his head.
“Yes, Earth.”
“But-But I thought Earth was incinerated billions of years ago. In fact, didn’t we incinerate it?”
Chief closed his eyes slowly with a sigh, then moved a joystick on one of the machines, zooming in until the dot grew larger and larger and became worthy of being called a planet.
“It’s Josh, correct?” Chief arched one eyebrow.
“Uh, actually, Jack. I-It’s Jack sir.”
“Right. Well, John, I want you to look closely, and remember this. Because no Teacher of Knowledge will ever give you this kind of learning experience.”
He turned back to the computer monitor and continued to zoom; white smears became clouds of condensed molecules and brown smudges continents. Soon, small figurines, strangely lacking limbs and vital organs, came into view, along with tufts of green fuzz and cement boxes the figurines kept disappearing into. The intern’s eyes widened as Chief got increasingly closer; a mob of the creatures had gathered in a street corner, holding squares with angry colors and loud words, screaming mutely to a wall of concrete generals.
“What is that?” The intern asked, incredulous.
“This,” he pointed at the small beings struggling to catch their breath inside the glass screen, “This is Experiment #207. It was our last shot at trying to cultivate a rare species our Ancestors used to call Humans. We know them as The Wrong Ones, the unspeakables, the destroyers of their own species,” he paused. Chuckling dryly, he raked his hand through the invisible hair that used to grow on his now balding head. “You see, Jake, humans were the first on their planet to generate a weapon powerful enough to completely wipe out their own species. A weapon that reflected the irreversible geocentrism of eons, the incessant battle that had been fought over terrains of emotional and topographical instability for as long as there had been another human to challenge. A weapon that we tried, and failed, to pry from their hands even as it was pointed to their mouths.”

iv.

“Is this what the experiment was all about sir?” Both the intern and Chief had sat down, the Chief’s eyes had gone glassy and the meteoric craters of experience and acumen lined the sallow yellow of his sinking cheeks. The intern waited. Rubbing the scratchy stubble of many days and little time, the Chief continued, his voice like the weight of the universe had lain, draped, on his vocal chords.
“No. Not at first,” he sighed. “We were full of hope back then, with the same glimmer in our eyes as you had not a moment ago.”
He stood back up, moved the joystick in a rapid succession of movements, causing the screen to change to a scene of pinks and purples and blues. Powders of vibrant colour caked the humans, making the whites of their smiling teeth whiter and the echoes of their laughter louder. Miniature humans ran around spilling joy on their parents and tripping over happiness in clumsy delight. It was beautiful.
“This,” he pointed, “is what they call the Holi Festival. The one day of their year they gather to celebrate without distinction of ethnicity, gender, status, or indeed, colour. It is the day of the Colours of Unity and Brotherhood, where discrimination is forgotten and universal love is remembered. This harmony is what we originally wanted to create with our experiment. After the humans and all earthly creatures were wiped out 6 billion years ago, I suggested, half-jokingly, if it might be possible to recreate Earth, along with its humans. Give them a second chance. We all laughed it off and moved on. But before passing away, my boss, Chief of Science and Discovery, haunted me with his last two words. He told me, as the life seeped out of him: ‘Do it’. And so I did.”
“But, if that was so long ago, then why are you only now ending the experiment?” The intern interjected.
“Because we were just too ignorant to face the truth,” he slammed his fist on the table, spilling the coffee and creating a puddle of black on the floor. “The first time, it looked as if the humans had finally overcome their problems. As if they might actually survive. And then disease wiped them out. The second try, they insulted Mother Nature and climate change picked them off one by one, catastrophe after catastrophe. The third ended when they failed to divert a meteor. Fourth, the bees grew extinct, causing unforeseen disruption to the entire food chain. And so on. As each try killed them off quicker and quicker, my obsession with saving them grew. But finally, after experiment 206, I realized, this was it. This was my, their, last chance. And…”
“And it failed. Again.” The intern nodded, understanding the emotional investment a lead Thinker can’t help but put on their Subjects.

v.

The screen had flickered to another set of coordinates. It was glitching, switching from rampant mobs, beheadings, kidnappings, knifings, threats, nuclear bombings, divorcing parents, helicopter shootouts, starving children, poor millionaires, lines of corpses like lilies in a row, death. The black and red was overwhelming. The intern, not being able to take anymore, looked into Chief’s three eyes, unblinking.
“Maybe, has it ever occurred to you, they don’t want to be saved?”
Chief shook his head, smiling a smile that didn’t match the dry tears on the cusp of spilling.
“Everyone wants to be saved, Jack. It’s just sometimes, a means of destruction greater than we can ever imagine gets in the way.”
“And what’s that?” The silence hugged every crevice of the pyramidal room, with only the beeping of the machines like a pulsing heart in a foggy distance.
“Pride, Jack. Pride.”